An evening with Ajamu

Tuesday 1 July, 2014, 7 pm, at Alice Yard

Ajamu is a London-based artist, known for his photographs depicting black male sexuality. In June and July 2014, he is participating in the first artist’s residency hosted by CAISO (the Coalition Advocating for Inclusion of Sexual Orientation), with support from Alice Yard.

On Tuesday 1 July, from 7 pm, Alice Yard will host an informal evening to welcome Ajamu and introduce him to members of the local arts and LGBTI communities. This will include a digital installation of some of the artist’s recent work, and a short introduction to his activities in Trinidad.

All are invited.

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About Ajamu:

Ajamu is an acclaimed London-based artist, archive curator, and sex activist, known for his fine art portraits and unapologetic imagery of black male sexuality and same-sex desire. He works in large-format black-and-white analogue photography and traditional 19th-century printing processes.

His work has been exhibited in various galleries, museums, and alternative spaces in the UK, Europe, and the United States. His most recent exhibition, Fierce (2013), ran at the Guildhall Art Gallery in London, and included 25 platinum prints of young Black LGBTQ “movers and shakers” and a 20-minute short film with a selection of the sitters.

Ajamu is co-founder of the award-winning organisation rukus! Federation and the rukus! Black LGBTQ Arts and cultural archive. He is one of the UK’s leading specialists on Black Queer heritage.

A conversation with curator Courtney J. Martin

Tuesday 17 June, 2014, 7 pm, at Alice Yard 

Courtney J. Martin is an art historian and curator based at Brown University. In June 2014 she will participate in a short curatorial residency at Alice Yard, exploring developments in Trinidad’s art scene. On Tuesday 17 June, at 7 pm, she will give an informal talk about her curatorial practice.

All are invited.

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About Courtney J. Martin:

Courtney J. Martin is an assistant professor in the History of Art and Architecture department at Brown University, and the author of lengthy essays on the work of many contemporary artists, including Rasheed Araeen, Kader Attia, Rina Banerjee, Frank Bowling, Leslie Hewitt, Wangechi Mutu, Ed Ruscha, and Yinka Shonibare. In 2012, she curated a focus display of Frank Bowling’s painting at Tate Britain.

Prior to Brown, she was an assistant professor in the History of Art department at Vanderbilt University (2010-2013); Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the History of Art at the University of California at Berkeley (2009-2010); a fellow at the Getty Research Institute (2008-2009); and a Henry Moore Institute Research Fellow (2007). She received a doctorate from Yale University in 2009. She also worked in the media, arts, and culture unit of the Ford Foundation in New York.

Her writing has appeared in Art Asia Pacific, Artforum.com, Art Papers, Contemporary, Flashart, Frieze, the Getty Research Journal, and NKA. In 2014, she is working on a manuscript about British art and politics after 1968, co-curating an exhibition of post-minimalist art in Denmark, and co-editing a volume of essays on the critic/curator Lawrence Alloway.

Read Martin’s essay “They’ve All Got Painting: Frank Bowling’s Modernity and the Post-1960 Atlantic”, originally published in the catalogue for Afro Modern: Journeys through the Black Atlantic.